


Steve Rogers Ruins Christmas: a Thanksgiving Miracle

by AggressiveWhenStartled



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Banter, But like for actual bros, Christmas, Garlic breath, Glockenspiel, Halloween, Hallowthanksmas, Haunted Houses, Humor, Look you have weathered 9 months of a worldwide pandemic, M/M, OT3, Sarcasm, Sharing a Bed, TREAT YOURSELF, Thanksgiving, You deserve 12k of Steve and Natasha bickering in Frankenmuth MI, You haven't changed those sweatpants in two weeks, interrupted only by Bucky and Sam calling to argue with eachother through Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27829558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AggressiveWhenStartled/pseuds/AggressiveWhenStartled
Summary: “I know I spent a while frozen in the arctic,” Steve said as he slowly reshut the driver’s side door and stepped back to take in the view. “So I guess I haven’t had a chance to see everything here in the future. But I was not expecting a Bavarian-themed Taco Bell with the KFC guy standing out front wearing lederhosen.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Comments: 165
Kudos: 490





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tagged this "garlic breath" and AO3 auto-assigned "breathplay." First, I want to assure AO3 those are not the same thing, but second, if they are, that's a really terrible mental image. Thank you QuietNight for all your wonderful beta work and my nifty cover image!
> 
> I have the rest complete, it's just in final edits. It should probably all post in the next week or so. Podfic is in the works.

“Huh,” Steve managed. His hand missed the car door as he tried to close it, and it made a sad _click_ as it stuck but didn’t catch.

Natasha leaned back against the Chevy and pursed her lips. “Well,” she said at length, her breath fogging in the chill. “I guess you have to give them points for sticking to the local theme. You’d want to match the architecture and landmarks around you.”

Behind them and across the street, said landmark struck the hour. A door at the top of the multi-story glockenspiel popped open and ejected a life sized mechanical figure of a nimble looking fella in red and green pajamas playing a flute. He was followed by a lavishly berobed king, shaking his head and wagging a stern finger. There were little painted rats. A couple of wooden villagers ticked along behind, faces both horrified and confused. Steve could sympathize. 

He watched for a moment, then turned back to the building they’d parked at; impossibly, it was somehow much worse.

“I know I spent a while frozen in the arctic,” Steve said as he slowly reshut the driver’s side door and stepped back to take in the view. “So I guess I haven’t had a chance to see everything here in the future. But I was not expecting a Bavarian-themed Taco Bell with the KFC guy standing out front wearing lederhosen.”

“The wonders of the modern world, Rogers.” Natasha gazed with dark delight upon the white stucco and mahogany stained wooden scrollwork framing neon fast food signage. “Don’t say I never take you anywhere interesting.”

“I would never say that,” Steve promised. “‘Interesting’ is...definitely a word I would use for this place. Are you going to be in there long? I want to call home, but I also kind of don’t want to be caught out here alone with that clock tower after dark.”

“Depends.” Natasha slung her purse over her shoulder and surreptitiously checked her knives under her jacket. “I may just turn around as soon as I open the door depending on what’s in there. Wish me luck.”

“Godspeed,” Steve told her, and she tossed off a messy salute and headed inside. Steve pulled out his phone and dialed, eyeing the fast food Frankenstein. He made sure to put the car between him and the animatronic Colonel in a feathered cap which was waving seductively at the road like a fried chicken incubus. A cluster of clipped hedges shaped like ducks shielded his eyes if he stood just right. 

“Fuck you,” Bucky said as soon as he picked up.

Steve smiled. “I miss you so much.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, calling right now. You know what I’m doing? You know what I’m doing right now?” Bucky grunted, then shifted something, and Steve’s phone notified him of an incoming video chat. 

“I’m not accepting this if you’re about to wave your dick at me, I’m in a classy area,” Steve lied, trying to sound stern. “They got topiary here. Topiary and _statues._ This is not an establishment I can stream my boyfriend’s penis in.”

“Just accept the damn video,” Bucky ordered, and Steve swiped to open up a grainy view of Bucky holding his phone aloft in one hand and dumping a comically huge cardboard box with “MISC” sharpied in Steve’s handwriting on the floor in front of him. “You called _eighteen_ of these ‘miscellaneous,’ Steve. You wrote ‘Sam’s things?’ on four. And the rest just have a series of question marks, except for _one_ box you wrote ‘maybe coffee’ on.”

“I couldn’t remember!” Steve protested. “You said you wanted me to be more specific, I did the best I could.”

“You have an _eidetic memory,_ you asshole,” Bucky said. “And now. And _now._ You call me right in the middle of our big move. You call from your trumped up ‘definitely searching for Hydra’ mission. In a _resort town in the midwest_ . You _liar._ I know what you’re doing, Steve. Next time we move you’re carrying _everything_.”

“Bucky,” Steve said, making sure that what Sam called his Earnest Eyebrows were clearly on screen. “Sweetheart. Honey. I may, sometimes, _occasionally_ , enjoy pissing you off, but I promise you: I would not come to a Bavarian-themed tourist trap where Christmas never dies just to get out of moving a few boxes into our new house.”

“Oh sure, sure,” Bucky said, hands up and eyes wide. He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, which looked like it had been tossed haphazardly into the middle of whatever room Bucky was in now. Steve hadn’t actually seen the whole place yet— he’d been on another mission when Sam and Bucky had picked it out. That one HAD been on purpose. “I believe you, pal! I do. It’s just so weird how the evidence keeps piling up.” He shook his head, baffled. “So much evidence. Just, you know. Boxes. Packed full of evidence. That Sam and I gotta lug around ourselves.”

Steve tried to pivot from earnest to the face Natasha had made last night when she caught him with half a can of Spam and a plastic fork at 2 am. “I don’t see you lugging shit right now, Barnes.”

Bucky kicked his feet up on a box and gave him a sunny smile. “I can’t, I’m talking to you. Anyway, you better bring me back something good from Christmas Land or whatever, or I’m leaving you for Natasha. _Natasha_ brings me nice things.”

“Natasha would never have you,” Steve scoffed. “And she brought you back a water-damaged shoe catalogue from our last mission.”

“I got these boots from that catalogue,” Bucky mused, admiring them for a moment. “Oh, I know! I want a tenement. I want one of those little porcelain 1940s tenement buildings that light up so I can put it on the mantle right here in the living room.”

Steve narrowed his eyes and waited for the punchline.

“So then,” Bucky went on, not even needing a prompt, “the next time you start bitching about the future and talking about the ‘good old days,’ I can point at the tiny light-up tenement building over the _fireplace_ . The one in the two story house _we own_ , with working bathrooms and _hot water on every floor_ , to remind you how much the ‘good old days’ sucked.”

“Sure,” Steve said dryly. “I’ll get you one, but it probably shouldn’t light up. Our tenement didn’t have electricity.”

“You are just proving my point, pal,” Bucky said, pointing at the screen.

“Is that Steve?” Sam’s thighs and the lower edge of another box staggered through the background at an improbable angle. “Tell him we know what he’s doing!”

Bucky leaned partially off-screen, rocking the chair back and letting his feet dangle. “I told him!”

“We know what you’re doing, Steve!”

“I’m stalking Hydra!” Steve protested. “At great personal cost! Sam, I am as we speak looking at a hedge made of ducks. I’m not here because I want to be.”

“And I know what you’re doing, too, Barnes,” Sam shouted from somewhere behind the phone now, judging by where Bucky was suddenly directing _his_ best Tragic Formerly-Brainwashed Look. It didn’t seem to be having the intended effect—Sam was immune to most supersoldier Looks after years of exposure. “Quit your middle school balancing act, it’s gonna break another chair. I refuse to be the only one living in this house who _doesn’t_ have unethical wartime-engineered steroids _and_ the only one moving our shit in, get lifting.”

“Gotta go Stevie,” Bucky said, meekly dropping back to four legs. “But I hope you have a real nice time over there while we drag in all the crates that you packed and stacked with your Erskine formula muscles and store brand brain.”

Steve grinned and nodded. “I will,” he assured him. 

Sam leaned into view. “Hey, your fussy animal hair paint brushes got a little dirty on the trip, Steve, how about I run ‘em through the dishwasher?” He moved like he was nudging something with his foot. “I think this one has all your pastels, so I assumed it didn’t matter which side was down. Who cares what order they end up in, am I right? But you want I should sharpen ‘em for you? Since you’re not here for the move and all. I want to make sure you feel comfortable when you get here.”

Steve’s grin dropped off his face. “Those brushes are _sable_ , and if you—”

“Bye, Stevie!” Bucky chirped, and the ‘call ended’ icon popped up just as Natasha stalked back over.

“No one in there knows anything,” she grumbled, sliding into the passenger side and slamming the door with maybe more force than advisable. Steve folded himself back inside and turned the elderly ignition, which gargled bitterly. “I even _giggled._ I giggled and leaned my boobs on the counter at a Taco Bell in Frankenmuth while a demonic choir from hell sang in German out of a plastic clock on the wall.”

“I’ll go in and loom at the next one instead,” Steve promised, pulling out of the parking lot. There were rows of multicolored fake tulips circling a life sized statue of a reindeer at the corner. “Or I could wear my running shirt. That gets a lot of attention.”

“You’d better.” Natasha glared out of the window at the smirking wildlife. “I’m not going to put this much work into my makeup tomorrow just to get drooled over by teenagers in felt hats.”

“Yeah, full face is only worth it if the teenagers are Hydra. I don’t even bother with mascara if I’m not guaranteed at least four Nazis that day,” Steve agreed cheerfully, and got an empty soda can thrown at his head.

***

It would have been completely untrue to say that the worst part of Hydra infiltrating Shield was Steve getting stuck doing all the boring stuff that would have gone to some Triskelion intern in the past. Sitting around doing mind-numbing intelligence gathering by, say, watching one of eighteen million fudge shops, in the cold and the dark, for hours. And. Hours. Obviously this minor discomfort didn’t at all compare to an absolute evil coming within a hair's breadth of taking over the country and murdering the more troublesome end of the populace. 

It was undeniably wrong to say it. 

But Steve sure as shit _thought_ it for a few minutes, then felt bad about thinking it, and finally ended up counting the little dirndl silhouettes lining the awning to pass the time. When his phone lit up with a call, he snatched it off the dash out of pure desperation and swiped to answer before it even had a chance to ring.

“—you put it Barnes! Who else is it gonna be? We’re the only two people here!”

Steve frowned. “Sam?”

“Steve! Steve, where the hell would your boy toy hide my shades, man, those were an apology gift from Stark for putting me in underwater jail. They cost more money than this tin can’s entire arm.”

“I didn’t take them!” Steve heard Bucky in the background. There was the slap of maybe a book shutting and a thump as it was thrown onto something soft. “If I had taken your fancy rich-guy sunglasses I’d be wearing them somewhere to show them off, not reading alone on the couch. We just moved, literally today, you probably just lost them in one of your stupid organizers.”

“They weren’t in an organizer, I wore them in! I left them right here on the coffee table. Right here!”

“Uh,” Steve said, a little taken aback. “Are you guys okay?”

“I _will_ be okay when this lying thief gives me back—“

“I didn’t take your crummy—“

There was a sudden crash, a lot of shouting, and then a loud clattering sound like a phone skittering across hardwood. Steve listened for a little longer on the off chance one of them would pick back up, but it was just distant grunts and garbled insults after that, so eventually Steve hung up. 

It was five whole minutes before he realized that he was smiling stupidly at the blank face of the fudge factory. Tonight was chilly and dark and boring, sure, but on the whole, things were good. Steve got to go home after all this, Sam and Bucky would both be living where he could hear them breathing and clearly _not dusted_ all night long, and he hadn’t even needed to go house hunting. Or move their things in. Or get stuck in the middle of the admittedly messy process of Sam and Bucky learning to live together in the same space.

Steve still wasn’t sure what had made Sam say yes when Steve had tentatively suggested weathering the post-Blip housing crunch by rooming all together, but he wasn’t going to question whatever Pied Piper magic or cosmic synchronicity had managed it. And Bucky had only shot him a single betrayed glare at the offer, he hadn’t even _said_ anything, which was basically a whole-hearted agreement in the Barnes family Language of Looks. 

Things were really, really good. 

Steve started humming, and wasn’t even all that upset when he eventually realized it was the song the Glockenspiel had been playing every fifteen minutes.

***

Natasha was sitting at the floral carved vanity, doing something careful with her once again chin length hair, when Steve dragged in around dawn. She twisted the flat iron to make a curl to frame her jaw. “No luck?”

“No luck.” Steve tossed the night vision goggles he’d carried in onto the chair by the desk and flopped face-first onto the bed. There had only been one, because somehow November was peak Christmas season or something, but since they were switching off shifts it didn’t make a big difference. “The only pattern in this town I’ve noticed is the decor and how _many_ signs there are for some local Christmas store. I’m going to crash. What are you covering today?”

“I’m going to watch traffic around the city,” she said, tweaking the curl. She grimaced, and pulled it a little straighter. “Maybe set up a few of the monitors and hack into local systems. One nice thing about looking for Nazis in a tourist town instead of hiking around the woods—lots of folks with home cameras and store security video.”

Steve was quiet. Natasha had apparently decided the curl was as good as she was willing to work for at the moment and reached for the hairspray. “You’re thinking,” she said after a while. “What is it?”

Steve sighed, rolling on his back. “The intel. It just isn’t…this place doesn’t really seem Hydra’s style. Unless they’re just nostalgic for the German glory days. Nothing else lines up.”

Calling what they were going on ‘intel’ was actually pretty damn generous. Natasha brought Steve in on a lot of things, but prioritizing actionable intelligence in the heat of battle was not one of the skills she usually relied on him for. She’d scavenged a sheaf of printed files from the last base they’d knocked over in the final ten minutes before the self-destruct mechanism had engaged—a mechanism that Steve had accidentally set off with two enemy combatants and an evil cow (which he still hadn’t been able explain to her without trailing off into mumbles at the end). Unfortunately, the papers had already been through smoke damage, a small fire, multiple sprays of bullets, and a thorough soaking in the building’s sprinkler system spurred by what she called ‘100% unnecessary’ grenades Steve had tossed in before she got there. After the cow, he hadn’t been prepared to take any chances, but Natasha maintained it would not _kill_ Steve to rifle through a file or two before he destroyed the next one.

In any case, the writing had been barely legible by the time they’d gotten a chance to decipher it later. There had been a lot of worrying phrases like ‘biggest in the world,’ and ‘enormous inventory,’ and ‘asset to Hydra worldwide,’ in it, references to lasers and pressure sensors and radio-activated arrays, the name of the small town they were staying in and a fudge shop, and not much else. So here they were, metaphorically wandering around poking the burrow with a stick, hoping something came out and tried to bite them.

“You could go back to your new house,” she offered, spritzing her hair and smoothing it. “Help the boys unpack.”

“You know what, never mind, I think I’m good,” Steve decided. “This place is probably crawling with Hydra. We had better stay here for at least a week. You can tell with all the…” He waved a hand at her. “Santas.”

“Santas are absolutely the true mark of evil,” Natasha agreed, and stood up to get to work.

***

When Steve woke up, groggy and missing Bucky a little, Natasha had created what looked like a full NASA station command center with odds and ends on the little desk they had in their room. She had pulled it over to the vanity for more space, then rigged something out of the three computer monitors they’d stored in the trunk of the Chevy along with both laptops, his drawing tablet, three burner phones and what must have been a wooden clog she had found somewhere.

“Hey,” he managed, untangling the covers. “No. You can’t use my drawing tablet for that.” Finally winning free, he stomped over and scooped it up. He didn’t think it had originally sported enough ports to be trailing as many wires as it was. “If I unplug these, is it going to wipe everything? I’ve been working on a picture of you, it was turning out really nice.”

“Hm,” Natasha said neutrally, which meant she was pleased. “No. But it’s processing all the video from the sixth chocolate shop and I’ll have to run it again on one of the burner phones if you do.”

Steve considered that. “Is it finding anything?”

“No.”

“Is it... _likely_ to find anything?”

Natasha sighed. “Also no. We’ve got a lot of traffic patterns, but it’s all to the tourist traps around here, which makes sense.”

“I’m taking back my tablet,” Steve said, pulled the cords, and brought up Natasha’s portrait to make sure it was still there. Now that he looked at it, though, the chin was a little off. And her eyes… he frowned and sat down on the edge of the bed, leaning over to dig through his bag for the stylus.

Natasha stood, stretched, and padded over to the mini fridge. “You know,” she said over her shoulder, rummaging through the takeout boxes, “if SOMEONE hadn’t covered those files with flame retardant and then somehow set them on fire anyway, I would have been able to figure out _which_ fudge shop in town they were talking about.”

Steve shrugged like he hadn’t been thinking the exact same thing all night and didn’t look up from his drawing app. Natasha’s chin was much more complicated than it had seemed at first. “You asked me to come on that mission,” he pointed out around the stylus in his mouth, unable to resist going in with his hands on the drawing any more than he could on paper. “It’s not my fault you didn’t pick the smart, sneaky supersoldier when you went to rout an enemy base filled with diabolical livestock. You picked the big, stupid one who hits everything with his face. This is on you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Natasha look back over, exasperation obvious. “‘Stupid one,’ my ass. You’re the best tactician I’ve ever met, you just _like_ solving all your problems by hitting them with your face,” she accused, and ducked back out of sight to scrounge something else.

Steve nodded, because it wasn’t like it was a secret, and switched back to the stylus for some finer detail work around Natasha’s eyes. 

“The two of you are ridiculous, by the way,” she continued, making a disgusted noise and dumping three empty paper containers in the trash. “You’re both so sure you’re the jerk and that your other half is the only useful one. Every time one of you does something stupid you blame it on me for not picking your boyfriend.”

“Which one of us is right?” He still couldn’t quite catch her subtle twinkle— he’d have to pay attention next time he said something particularly embarrassing and she wanted him to know just how loud she was laughing at him on the inside.

“Neither of you are; you’re _both_ the useless jerk.” She slammed the (empty) mini fridge door shut and started sorting through her luggage. “James ate all my takeout just last week, and you’ve eaten it all today, and both of you put the empty cartons back every time like a pair of twin dicks. Come on, let’s go get Szechuan. I saw a place in the last town, and I want cumin lamb.”

Steve made a face and looked up. “Don’t get the cumin lamb,” he complained, setting the tablet aside to grab his coat anyway. “They use garlic like onions in that one. The last time you had that much was on that pizza covered in whole cloves and it was coming out of your pores all night. With the serum I could smell it even when we _weren’t_ sharing a bed.”

“And it was absolutely worth it. Besides, you love garlic.” She twisted her hair up and clipped it in place, then sat down to yank on her boots. 

“Not _all night_ ,” Steve protested, “I’ll have to stake out another fudge shop in self preservation,” but the phone started going off and that was Bucky’s ring, so he picked up without finishing the thought. “Hey, hi. What’s—?”

“Where did you pack the India ink,” Bucky demanded before Steve could get a whole sentence out. There was a sound like papers falling off a surface and someone, presumably Bucky, kicking some furniture. “I know you have some. Where did you hide it?”

Steve frowned as he shrugged into his coat. “What? Why do you need India ink?”

“This flying onion,” Bucky said, shuffling something around. Steve thought ruefully that it was probably his box of sketchbooks and colored pencils. Goddamnit. “This _living donut_ . He has been rocking in the damn chair the old owners left in the attic, it’s driving me _crazy_.”

“What?” Steve asked again, only more confused. “Are you talking about Sam? _Who_ left a chair in the attic?”

“That fucking _airborn salami_ , I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me, but he’s gonna have to say it to my face. Is he saying I’m old?” Bucky paused for a minute, like he was considering. “Is he saying I’m a codger? But then why is _he_ the dipshit in the rocking chair at three am?” The rustling started up again, and Steve really hoped Bucky had not just dumped his neat stack of backyard landscapes out and into a mess on the floor. “Either way he’s going to regret it.”

“I don’t know what you want to do to Sam with my good drawing ink,” Steve said, the word _regret_ circling ominously around his mind. “But whatever it is, please don’t.” 

“Ah, found it,” Bucky announced, ignoring him entirely. “I’m good. Bye Stevie!” 

Steve got as far as “I’m serious—” before the line cut. When he turned around, Natasha looked thoughtful. He raised his eyebrows at her.

“Eh,” she said, holding open the door with her head cocked to the side, lips pursed. “Maybe James is the jerk.”

***

They got back late, and then Steve got back even later after a long walk to safeguard his superserumed nose from the first few hours of garlic, so he hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep when his awful, vibrating cell phone skittered around the bedside table with a call. On the other side of the bed, Natasha stayed crashed out like a sack of potatoes with red hair. 

A sack of red potatoes that still reeked of cumin lamb. “Rogers,” Steve managed after he swiped to answer, rolling over and wrinkling his nose.

“I figured it out! _I fucking figured it out, Steve.”_

“Wha—? Sam?” Steve blinked and squinted at the alarm clock. He wasn’t sure how much sleep he’d gotten. One hour? Two? Ten minutes? “You what?”

“It’s goddamn _alcohol,_ ” Sam crowed, followed by a rattling crash in a room that echoed. A bathroom? “He is using fucking rubbing alcohol and a damn cotton swab, Steve, where did you assholes learn this during the forties? I had to find it online. I’m drawing a dick.”

“I...okay?” Steve tried, not sure if it was lack of sleep making this completely incomprehensible. He rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Uh,” Sam said, distracted, and paused like he was looking at something. “It’s 6 am here, what time is it where you are?”

“I’m just a few states over, Sam, it’s 6 am here too,” Steve told him, sitting up. “And I’m doing opposite shifts with Natasha. I just went to bed.”

“Yeah, whatever superman, this is _important shit_ . Your boy has been escalating a...a fucking _prank war_ since we moved in,” Sam growled, completely unremorseful. There were some heavy thumps and the snap of a plastic cap. “I have had it. I have had it with his adolescent short-sheeting vintage antics. He hid a fucking radio somewhere that plays nothing but barely inaudible swing music day and night. He wrote invisible words all over the bathroom mirror last night and scared the shit out of me when I got out of the shower and the steam showed me the message. Creepy asshole.”

“...What did he use the India ink for?” Steve asked without thinking, and Natasha stirred and rolled over, a waft of cumin and garlic following after.

“Man.” There was a squeaking noise, like something wet dragging over glass. “I do _not_ want to talk about that.”

“Okay.” Steve cracked his jaw in a yawn. “Could I go back to sleep, since you don’t want to talk? Or are you gonna keep me awake listening to you not talk some more?”

Sam hung up on him.

Steve slowly lowered the phone to his lap.

“I am,” Natasha mumbled into her pillow after a moment, hair a tangled mess covering her entire face, “ _unbelievably_ thankful that I am in Michigan while all this is happening. I have no idea why you thought they could share a house in the first place.”

“You and me both,” Steve admitted, lying back and tugging the covers up. After a moment, he sat back up to dig the phone out from under his butt and drop it on the side table. “Since you’re awake, though, go take a shower. It smells like Dorothy dropped a house made of garlic on top of the Wicked Witch’s sauce factory in here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note to those of you who actually live in Michigan: Did I make up the Bavarian combination Taco Bell and KFC? Yes. Yes I did. Do you have leave to judge me? No, because for a second, you thought, “Wait, IS there a bavarian style TacoKFC surrounded by a duck hedge in Frankenmuth?” and let’s be honest, it’s a) totally believable and b) really not the most ridiculous thing I wrote about Frankenmuth in this fic, the rest of which are at least real enough for me to find pictures of them in my online research, and c) you clicked on a fic about the Avengers in Frankenmuth tagged “halloween” and “haunted house” so really I’m free to do what I want here.
> 
> You know what also D) I made it up because the name was funnier than Bavarian McDonalds, which DOES exist in Frankenmuth, so shame on you guys anyway.
> 
> ...although to be fair E), I did extensive online research about Frankenmuth, Michigan, including watching a bewildering 20 minute youtube video of some guy just turning off the expressway and driving past, when the full extent of my New York fic research consists of “Hey SilentWalrus, what’s a suburb with a funny name,” so I mean I guess the last laugh is on me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The comments so far fall into roughly 3 categories:
> 
> 1\. Wait you mean to tell me Frankenmuth is REAL  
> 2\. I've been to Frankenmuth and you have described it perfectly  
> 3\. I live near Frankenmuth and there is no Szechuan takeout anywhere near it, what is wrong with you
> 
> Which are all fair.

“Okay,” Steve said on their sixth evening of Ye Olde Fudge Shoppe surveillance. “This is getting out of hand.”

Natasha nodded, idly watching the video feed of the local outlet mall parking lot. On screen, a man was slowly capsizing his car trying to go around the pre-Thanksgiving traffic by driving on the sloped median. “Yeah. You’d think if there _were_ any Hydra bases out here, someone would have noticed Captain America buying chocolates in skin tight under armour in at least _one_ of the eighteen storefronts you’ve been by. There’s been nothing. We’re going to still be stuck here during the Black Friday sales, and that’s not going to be pretty.”

“What? No,” Steve said, looking down at his phone. It chirped with another notification and he winced. “Well yes, but that’s not what I mean. I mean with Sam and Bucky.”

“Ah,” Natasha said, and looked at the phone, too. “Hm.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. The phone chirped again.

**Sam: If you come home and can’t find the bowl you HAND THREW for me, it’s because our ASSHOLE roommate HAND THREW it across the damn room last night**

**Bucky: If Sam is texting you about that stupid, ugly bowl you pawned off on him during your last ceramics phase, that dumbass put it too close to the edge of the table and it FELL OFF. I didn’t throw SHIT but I’m GLAD ITS DEAD**

Steve looked back up. “Does it seem like...something is going on? I mean. Something real? They’re both pretty angry.”

Natasha made a face. “I’m going to be totally honest,” she said, making finger guns at him. “I am not sleeping with any of you, so I have no responsibility to touch any of this situation with a ten-foot pole.” 

**Bucky: Also tell him to stop STEALING MY STUFF, I’m finding my clothes all over the house. If he keeps messing them up I’m just gonna stop wearing any, see how he likes that**

“Brush my hair before you go out fudge-stalking tonight though, I don’t feel like it,” Natasha told him, and Steve grabbed the distraction with both hands like a drowning rat. “Just give me a braid to sleep in.”

Steve sat down behind her and brushed for a while, Natasha still eyeing the monitors, and then he picked up a few sections of hair to get started. “Now that you mention it, though, the Hydra thing is getting a little weird, too. You’d think that a base that’s ‘biggest in the world’ and covered in lasers and floodlights would be… a little bit more noticeable out here. Especially with how crowded with tourists it is already.”

“Maybe they stuck enough Christmas lights and white stucco on it that no one can tell,” Natasha joked, then frowned. “Wait.”

Steve paused, waiting, and his phone chirped again.

And again.

And again.

“Ugh, go deal with your live-in Odd Couple somewhere else so I can think,” Natasha ordered, pointing to the door, and Steve sighed and put on his boots. He trudged out into the hallway still half into his coat, then tucked his phone against his shoulder as he pulled on a pair of gloves and let it ring.

“Hey, Sam,” he said when Sam answered, opening the outside door. It was snowing, and he had to admit it was nice with the bright lights everywhere. “Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

Sam was quiet on the other end. Then he said, “Look, I have a question for you.”

“Shoot,” Steve said, looking up at the snowflakes aglow in the streetlight overhead. There was yet another advertisement for that same local Christmas store hanging from it, one of the places all the out-of-town cars tended to head through, and was apparently a Big Deal.

Something perked up in the back of his head like a bloodhound, and he missed part of what Sam said next. “...and it’s a little much,” Sam was explaining when Steve’s brain blinked back online.

“...sorry?” Steve asked, realizing he had no idea what Sam was talking about.

“Look, the dude is laid out in his underwear on the couch right now, and he gives me this look every time I walk in like he’s daring me to say something about it. I can’t tell if he wants to get in an actual fight or if he’s trying to pull pigtails and is overshooting it.”

“I…” Steve frowned, staring at the sign. _Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland,_ it said, under a shining nativity scene. _The World’s Largest Christmas Store. An American Tradition._ “I guess you could. Ask him?” There was something there, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He peered closer.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, like he was turning it over in his head. “It’s probably the fight option, but I’ll ask him. We’re helping Dr. Strange with something tomorrow, so I’ll ask about it after, maybe. Is that...I’m a little surprised. Are you cool with that?”

“I mean,” Steve tried, distracted. _Extensive selection,_ the sign boasted. “I just want you guys to be happy.”

Sam’s voice sharpened, like his attention was swinging back to laser on Steve. “He talks about you all the time. He’s not going to do anything like leaving you. That’s not what I meant. I wouldn’t do that to you either, man.”

“What?” Steve’s brain derailed. He took the phone away to frown at it, then put it back to his ear. “Who, Bucky? Of course Bucky isn’t leaving me, we’re the most codependent jerks I know. Weren’t we talking about Bucky?”

“Yyyyeah,” Sam said, sounding uncertain now. “Yeah, I’m talking about Bucky. Walking around with his ass out and trying to get an emotional response out of me all day every day. Who I have been talking about for this whole conversation.”

“You’ve been talking about him in every conversation we’ve had for the past week,” Steve pointed out, looking back up at the Christmas store sign, then trailing off as realization hit him with the full force of baby Jesus shilling light-up snowmen.

“You know what,” Sam said distantly. “You’re actually right about that, aren’t you.”

“Sam, I gotta go,” Steve said, juggling the phone in his gloved hands as he jogged back towards the inn. “I just realized where Hydra is. Good luck with Bucky, you know I care about you both.”

“...do you,” Sam said after a pause, but then Steve hung up and shoved the phone in his pocket, slamming through the doors hard enough the hinges creaked and barrelling into the room just as Natasha came running out waving his tablet and its profusion of problematic dongles . 

The only reason Natasha didn’t comically ricochet off his chest was probably her Soviet Spy Skills. “I know where the Hydra base is,” Steve blurted, steadying her with one hand and relieving her of the tablet ( _dammit_ ) with the other.

She surrendered it and gripped his arm, eyes shining with predatory glee. “Christmas store?” she asked, pulling him inside.

“ _Christmas store,_ ” Steve agreed, letting himself be pulled and lifting the mattress against the wall, sheets and everything, so they could get to the weapons and kevlar they’d hidden underneath. Natasha was already shedding her civilian clothes, throwing them anywhere in her rush. He scooped up his stars and stripes and followed suit.

“Do we hit it fast,” she mused, shimmying into her gear, “and risk looking like idiots and ransacking a warehouse full of Christmas trees if we’re wrong, or sneak around all night looking for proof?” The leggings on the Widow suit were tight, and she flopped back onto the box springs to wiggle them on, sending his shield and two of her knives clattering to the floor.

Steve couldn’t judge; he was hopping on one foot trying to tug off his jeans and put on his own tactical leggings. He was tempted to flop down, too, regardless of pointy surprises in the bedding. “I guess you know which one I prefer, but it’s...probably better to be sure?” he admitted after cramming on his helmet and doing up the velcro on his bullet-proof vest. 

Natasha rolled her eyes, pulling on her sleeves and zipping up. “Don’t set the place on fire this time,” she ordered, digging the keys to the Chevy out of her pocket and striding into the hallway just as he finished buckling on his belt and gear.

“I’m not going to set the Frankenmuth Christmas store on fire.” Steve trotted after her, adjusting his harness, and swung the shield around to rest at his back. “It’s an American tradition.” 

***

There were bright red and green lasers pointing at the sky when they pulled up to Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland, even though it was closed and there weren’t any other cars in the lot. As they watched the last employee straggle out, they learned there was a pressure sensor in the doormat that made it light up and sing jingle bells. Beside them was a light array, with a posted placard that said it was synced to a local radio station.

Steve stuck his arm back in the car and hit the stereo button. It was playing Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

“So what are the odds,” he asked, listening to the jolly voice sing about bullying animals, “that we didn’t pull a bunch of secret Hydra files out of that base? How likely is it we just found someone’s holiday vacation plans?”

Natasha was still scowling at the treacherous musical doormat, grim-faced. “Getting more and more likely by the second,” she admitted.

Steve nodded. “If it turns out you have been giving me shit for three weeks about accidentally blowing up a bunch of Bavarian getaway flyers, I am never going to let you forget it.”

“If it turns out we’ve spent a week in this town staying at a place with a waist-high wooden shoe on display because we thought an advertisement for fudge in Michigan was actionable Hydra intel,” Natasha replied, viciously cheerful, “I’m going to kill us both anyway to put us out of our misery, so I guess I won’t have to put up with you for long.”

They watched the light display for another four verses until the bit about the misfit weirdo saving the day. 

“We should check to make sure,” Steve sighed, putting his hands on his hips. At least it wasn’t going to take long. The closest thing to security was the frankly disconcerting Santa statue in a sort of pinup pose lying on top of the sign at the entrance.

Natasha snorted. “Yeah, the only thing worse than this would be if we turned around and left, and then it turned out Hydra _had_ infested the place.”

“Christ on a crutch,” Steve swore. “You’re not wrong. Okay. Let’s go break into Wonderland, I guess.”

***

A life-size pink cheeked Santa in full red and white Kris Kringle glory was assuming the position next to the shopping carts. Steve went over it with his flashlight twice— nope. Still there. 

Natasha strolled over to him, scanning the rafters with her own light. “What’s up?”

Steve could only wave at it, willing her to understand.

She rolled her eyes. “We walked past a four foot high family of gingerbread men and a caroling choir of ye olde tyme mannequins just at the front door,” she reminded him. “There were _three_ life-size camels in the nativity scene outside. There was a light-up jingle bell taller than I am. But this is where your hang up is?” 

“I have an eidetic memory,” Steve reminded her. “This is going to leave a traumatic scar on my sex life for years.”

“You should probably stop staring at it, then,” she suggested, and he had to give her that. 

It was eerie in the dark, shadowy figures draped and looming menacingly everywhere in the tall warehouse above them, but whenever he looked closer, they were thankfully just unsettling holiday decorations with all the light up bits turned off. Steve had assumed ‘World’s Largest’ was just marketing speak, but he could actually believe it now that he was here. It was bigger than that flat-pack furniture store Barton had taken him to where Steve kept accidentally breaking everything he sat on. 

“How do they possibly sell enough of this crap to afford stocking this kind of inventory?” Steve wondered out loud, as they walked. “I know you moderns are weird about Christmas, but it’s still only one day. A few months, even at the most future-brain unhinged.”

“Well, Grandpa, I guess I don’t know,” Natasha said, hovering her flashlight over a rotating display of...Hanukkah christmas tree ornaments. They both made considering noises, then moved on. “Maybe, in your ancient wisdom, you could teach me about it. The sign out front says they opened in 1945.”

To their left, a mini forest of manufactured aluminum Christmas trees advertised that they could sing, play music, rotate in place, and were honestly probably possessed by the ghost of Disco if they matched Steve’s horrified mental image. “Well, there you go. I put down the Valkyrie in ‘45.”

Natasha laughed. “You’re saying, what? That you would have put a stop to the madness if you had been here, or that the nation was so deep in mourning that they lost their collective minds? You know, I bet it’s all actually kind of nice with all the lights on.”

“Probably both,” Steve said loftily, nudging aside a box filled with metallic blown glass ornaments shaped like swaddled infants. The airbrushing was all slightly off, so when he ran the flashlight over them, they looked cross-eyed and surprised, with bright red lipstick they’d put on in the dark. “We’ll have to agree to disagree on the lights.”

After a few hours of wandering around in the dark, pausing every so often to point out something especially bizarre to each other, they were both relatively sure the entire trip out had been a wild goose chase. A wild Christmas goose. Probably stuffed and wearing a cute newsie cap and suspenders. 

Steve mentally rolled his eyes at himself, eyeing uncanny-valley-cherub number one hundred seventeen. They were in the employee only area behind the wrapping station, checking the cubbies under the desk, but even that wasn’t safe. “Sam and Bucky can never know about this,” he warned her. “We are never going to go on another mission again without hearing about it if they do.”

“We can work on the story on the drive back,” Natasha agreed. “It’s about ten hours, we have the time to get the details down. How many Hydra agents did we defeat, do you think?”

“At least twenty-five,” Steve decided, poking at an enormous sprig of plastic poinsettias in the corner. He stepped closer, trying to get a better look. Was that a security camera? “No, that’s too perfect a number. Twenty-eight. Enough to be impressive, but not so much that it’s weird we didn’t call to--”

Steve felt the slight give as a pressure sensor in the carpet depressed under his foot. He heard a click, and a mechanical whirring.

Natasha caught on just a hair faster than he did; she yanked the shield off his back and over their heads just in time to catch the machine gun fire spewing from three different clutches of poinsettias. Steve caught her on his back, her arm still holding the shield over their heads like a bullet umbrella, and kicked down the door to the break room to get some cover. 

The lights throughout the store suddenly flickered on, a klaxon that somehow sounded like ‘Deck the Halls’ echoing through the building: FA LA LA LA LAH. In the smoke from the machine gun fire still rattling into the wall behind them, the lines of bright motion sensors were now visible criss-crossing a restricted section of the store just to the right of where they had been searching. With the main lights on, he could see the reflective camera lenses in the eyes of the Father Christmas beside the door, three laser sights carefully worked into his brocade hatband.

“What,” Steve gasped with feeling, “ _t_ _he hell_.”

The boxes of frankincense and myrrh held by the three wise men carved into the wall started to waft out some kind of cinnamon colored gas. “Time to go,” Natasha said, and they charged back into the machine gun fire, straight into the restricted area, through another doorway, and kicked through a white picket gateway to wind up in…

Another, smaller display room.

Steve and Natasha crouched low, weapons up, and slowly inched around till they were back to back. It was still, and quiet, although they could still hear the alarms going off in the main room.

“Oh my god,” Natasha breathed, staring at a row of blue glitter snowflakes. “Those are missile deflectors.”

Steve narrowed his eyes at the musical light-up doormats that were all carbon copies of the one out front, except these ones had a tiny black rectangle tucked along one edge. “Those are _body scanners_ ,” he realized, horrified. 

“Holy shit,” Natasha swore, gaze darting around her at what was slowly revealing itself to be an entire evil showroom of holiday themed weaponry and surveillance hardware. “Asset to Hydra. Extensive collection. _Steve,_ ” she risked a glance at him over her shoulder. “Hydra put a _weapons distribution center_ into a Bavarian town in the Midwest for security tech disguised as Christmas decorations.”

Steve blinked. “You know,” he said conversationally, frowning at the jar of explosive caltrops disguised as star-shaped twinkle lights, “I tell people about my job, but they never actually believe me about most of it.”

“Hydra has _really_ gone downhill,” Natasha said, sounding impressed.

“We haven’t gone downhill, we’ve _innovated_ ,” announced the woman who stepped from within the central gingerbread house in… well. In a full length red skirt, a white starched blouse, her hair pinned back in a low bun, and a cross stitched hydra armband. She looked like a white supremacist Mrs. Claus. “Wait until you see what the _voice activated_ products can--”

Steve hit her in the throat with his shield and she gagged, coughing. “Comms on,” Steve said, thumbing his earpiece, and Natasha followed suit, and then a slew of agents came pouring into the room. They were all dressed in green, had red belts, and…

“Did I breathe in the wise men gas? I think I breathed in the wise men gas,” Natasha said, voice clear in his ear even as they barrelled through the agents for the main room, Steve angling the shield to catch the gunfire coming from behind them. “I could swear these agents are all wearing hats with appliqued elf ears on them.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a uniform that reflects the local culture,” one of the Nazi elves yelled after them, aiming a Rudolph statuette Steve’s direction. Steve kicked a yule log from under an embroidered Christmas stocking display, and it bounced off the giraffe from the Holidays Around the World shelves and knocked Rudolph’s aim off, just in time for it to open its mouth wide and jet a huge gout of flame into the air.

“Remember not to set anything on fire!” Natasha yelled. She ducked left to avoid an actual sword covered in sugarplum fairies.

“I’m not gonna!” Steve protested, narrowly avoiding another jet of flame, but he had to take the next one head on to keep it from setting the entire wrapping station behind him alight. 

Bucky’s ringtone on his cell phone chimed.

“ _No,_ ” Steve told the phone, sweating, even though Bucky couldn’t hear him. His shield absorbed energy, sure, but he couldn’t take the flames forever. If nothing else, someone was going to notice that his legs were sticking out underneath at some point. “ _No._ I refuse to listen to you complain about your stupid _prank war_ while fascist elves burn down a family-owned business with a reindeer blowtorch! I won’t do it!”

The phone went quiet, then started back up again. Rudolph finally let up for a moment, and Steve vaulted _almost_ over it, knocking off two sequin-covered antlers, to swing a roundhouse to the face of the agent behind it. He stomped on the reindeer, hard, and had a second to catch his breath before two Nazi elves leapt at him with candy-striped stun batons.

Steve _hated_ stun batons. He grabbed both, gritting his teeth hard against the shock, and swung the elves holding them into the arms of an eight foot tall Frosty the Snowman covered in tiny flashing lights. One of the agents screamed, jerking mid-air as he caught the business end of his buddy’s baton, and the whole construction overturned, upending three shiny wheelbarrows full of shimmering glass eggplants. 

Off to the right, Steve heard Natasha’s cell phone ring. “Don’t answer it,” Steve growled into his earpiece, so of _course_ she picked up immediately, mid-fight, and routed it to the line the comms were on.

“Steve’s not picking up, I need you to--” Bucky started, then apparently heard the gunfire. “Natasha? You okay?”

“Eh,” Natasha grunted, and a pair of curly-toed green boots were momentarily visible above one of the aisles of personalized ornaments shaped like horseshoes before all three shelves from ‘Jessica’ to ‘Nathaniel’ collapsed. “It’s fine. What’s up?”

Steve threw an elf in her direction out of sheer exasperation. “I didn’t pick up because we are _busy_ ,” he huffed over the elf’s screams as they cleared three ballerinas and hit a stuffed bear clutching a wreath made of candies.

Mrs. Claus, not recovered enough to shout any voice activation codewords, but recovered enough to be a pain in his ass, reappeared to scuttle over and mess with the back of the toppled Frosty. Steve’s hearing filled with static, Frosty’s eyes turned red, and Steve took a couple steps backward to get his earpiece out of feedback range.

“What does Bucky want?” Steve asked, panting a bit, when his comms reset. He could hear Natasha groaning, but it didn’t sound like she was in actual pain, so it was probably for Bucky’s benefit. He eyed the animatronic snowman turning its gigantic head slowly to look at him. “What can’t wait until we finish trashing an American tradition?”

“James wants to fuck Sam,” Natasha explained over Bucky’s squawk of indignation in response. “He’s checking to see if you’re cool with it.”

Steve choked, head whipping around in Natasha’s direction as he spent valuable moments wondering if incense gas was maybe not so bad and willing himself to not, not, _not_ get a boner in the middle of a fight with Mrs Claus, all her elves, and a light-up evil snowman. “He _what,_ ” Steve managed, and then Frosty punched him in the gut and knocked him through four shelves covered in chocolate Santas and into a row of cast iron fire screens. 

He staggered to his feet and whipped a decorative ‘Let It Snow’ tea tray across the space, putting some spin into it, and it popped Frosty’s smiling coal-dotted face right off. 

“I told you to say it _romantically,_ ” Bucky was complaining to Natasha. “Look, I know it’s okay in theory and we decided this all a while ago, I just wanted to check that it’s still jake, but he won’t even answer his phone.” Bucky had the nerve to sound _peeved_ about it, like Steve wasn’t _currently fighting Hydra in a warehouse filled with glitter in Michigan._

“Tell _Bucky_ that his dick can wait until I’m not actively beheading animatronic snowmen!” Steve shouted at Natasha. He kicked Frosty in the chest, knocking the three sections of its body apart, and the twinkle lights inside blinked and popped as the wires connecting them broke.

“Tell _Steve_ if he has time to complain about my dick, he has time to confirm relationship boundaries,” Bucky shot back.

“Aren’t you fighting with Sam right now?” Natasha asked, coming into view, rebounding off a giant candy cane attached to the wall and swinging from an overhanging light fixture made out of mistletoe. “Didn’t he just call you a gun-slinging hipster with over styled hair?” She skidded a little on the cotton snow adorning the top of the shelf she landed on, but managed to hit the hydra goons aiming handguns at her with her Widow’s bites before she went over the other side of it ass-first.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed, dreamy. “I think he really likes me. Come on Stevie, you still there?”

The shelf Natasha fell off wobbled and tumbled over. It knocked Frosty’s head around the maze of pre-lit trees like a cue ball, stripped wires trailing from it and sparking with electricity.

It rolled to a stop in a pile of wrapping and tissue paper.

“Uh oh,” Mrs. Claus croaked. 

The paper kindled, the silver backing on the metallic rolls smoking like crazy, and Steve almost got speared on a pair of decorative deer antlers covered in tinsel by Mrs. Claus as they both leapt instinctively to stamp out the fire.

The curling ribbons on the wrapped packages flared like, well. Like fuses on a bomb, and when Mrs. Claus reversed course and dove for cover, Steve decided that the only smart thing would be to follow suit and slide home-run style behind a wall covered with little angel tree ornaments, their heads upraised in song, with an ominous banner that said _Keep your holidays bright, but your loved ones safe! Take home a beautiful decoration that doubles as a fire alarm for your tree._

Well, that didn’t bode well, Steve thought. He couldn’t see Natasha, but he could hear her swearing in his earpiece and breathing like she was running, so she had evidently noticed the gift bombs, too. Still, he yelled out a warning to her just in case. 

The explosion barely took out a fourth of the building, and Steve thought it wouldn’t have been so bad if the decorators hadn’t covered every surface in the warehouse in paper ribbons, fluffy cotton snow, and dried pine boughs. Some deeply buried and denied part of Steve’s id relaxed at the comfortable familiarity of being thoroughly in the shit as everything nearby instantly caught fire.

The blaze leapt through the interior like a reindeer off a roof. An enormous, flame-wrapped paper-mache elephant bedecked in holly lost its structural integrity and collapsed on Mrs. Claus as she scrambled towards Winter Wonderland. Steve barely shook himself out of his fascinated stupor in time to drag her unconscious body out from under the wreck.

And then.

The first dozen fire alarm angels behind him started up. 

Like a satanic choir actively burning in hell, one by one, each whistling, openmouthed angel got a whiff of smoke and went off like the screaming, tortured souls of pre-war teakettles. 

“I told you not to set it on fire!” Natasha yelled, barely audible over the din, which grew in volume until the _entire fire safety display_ was denouncing him for blowing up an American/Bavarian/consumerist tradition _._ Steve staggered back, his super-serumed eardrums healing the damage even as it happened, maintaining a continuous level of shrill horror. “ _I told you not to--_ ”

“I know!” Steve bellowed, dodging a half-deafened Hydra agent who tossed a fire ax at his head in a sort of perfunctory way. Almost everyone, even a miraculously-returned-to-conciousness Mrs. Claus, was trying to get away from the fire and the shrieking seraphim as fast as they could. Steve charged right through a display of glittery baubles shaped like potatoes and shouldered the last fighter over a table covered in delicate china townhouses. “I know! I’m already being punished, you don’t need to get on my case!”

“Fuck, what are you two _doing?_ ” Bucky asked, apparently _still on the phone_. “Hold on, I need to switch ears, I can’t hear out of this one now. Who set off what sounds like sonic grenades?”

“I didn’t _mean_ to,” Steve protested, finally making it to a window and tossing the nearest Nazi elf through without bothering to open it first. 

“Look, all I want to know is if Sam can bend me over our new dining room table, yes or no. You can watch or join in or whatever, I’ll videotape if you want, but I gotta know before Sam gets back because it’s looking like it might, uh, come up. You know. So to speak. And--”

“I am _busy!_ ” Steve shouted, finally chasing the remaining four agents far enough away from the shrieking angels to be heard.

“Well if you’re so busy, just give the okay for Sam’s dick up my ass and I’ll leave you alo--oh. Hi. It’s you. Uh. Sam.” There was a pause on Bucky’s end while Steve fended off a woman swinging a three-foot metal nutcracker figurine covered with snowflakes and ribbons. “Wow, my superhearing isn’t up to _shit_ after Steve set off those explosions right in my ear, is it? How, uh. How are you...doing?”

Whatever Sam said next was blocked by a bout of coughing over comms and then Natasha’s voice, hoarse and out of breath. “I am never going to forgive you, Steve,” She gasped, “for setting Christmas on fire in Hydra Wonderland, so I was too busy to record your literal dumpster fire relationship to properly savor later.”

“A little professionalism, Natasha,” Steve said, strained, climbing out the broken window and dragging what he hoped was the last Hydra agent up the wall behind him. The smell of woodsmoke and a bright crackling followed him out into the snow as tinsel-covered rotating trees toasted merrily away inside.

“Professionalism?” Natasha demanded, audible in his earpiece and to his left at the same time, and he caught sight of her around the corner pulling a group of limp Hydra agents piled onto a sleigh out of the flames. “You are actively negotiating an open relationship in the middle of a raid on enemy weapon stockpiles, and you’re hounding me about professionalism?”

“Nevermind, baby, Sam says you already okayed it with him and we’re gonna have a threesome when you get back, I gotta--ah! I gotta go,” Bucky said eventually, voice cracking, and followed it up with some labored gasps. It was a little while before he managed words again, and when he did it was a jumbled, breathy mess. “I love you, tell Natasha hi, I’m gonna to go get fucked by the Captain America that flies.”

“Damn right you are,” came Sam’s voice, barely audible in the background, but thick with intent.

“Wait, Sam says I _what?_ ” Steve demanded, but got cut off when the burning gingerbread family out front collapsed onto the costume bins and sent out a shower of red light-up noses on elastics. One caught him right in the mouth.

“The three of you are gross,” Natasha said, wrinkling up her face, and then the fire trucks arrived.

***

Steve sat next to Natasha on the hood of the Chevy, watching Frankenmuth Fire (their truck had a wreath on it) plus several other crews from nearby towns deal with the flaming warehouse, rubbing the still-healing bruise on his jaw. Every so often the pressurized water hoses hit something inside that sent up a cloud of green or red glitter filled smoke into the sky. Beyond the safety perimeter, a few tourists in terrible sweaters mourned the loss of their Early Bird Special Holiday Deals. 

“So,” Natasha said, leaning back on her elbows. She had a split lip and a brace on her wrist, but was more or less as okay as can be expected after battling a clutch of Hydra agents dressed like a mall photo troupe with flamethrowers. “Sam and James, huh.”

Steve nodded slowly. “Sounds like it,” he answered. The flashing police cars were blending with the light display, somehow achieving an almost balletic effect in concert with the Transiberian Orchestra drifting out of the Chevy’s open window now that Natasha had switched the radio back on. 

It was actually awful pretty, now that he took the time to notice. This place was maybe not so bad. 

Natasha leaned over and nudged him with her shoulder. “How are you feeling about that?” 

“I’m kind of working on not thinking about it right now.” Steve tried to flatten his helmet hair and wiped some of the particolored ash off his face. “I forgot my cup back in our room, and I still need to talk to the FBI when they show up without disgracing America any more than I already have tonight. If I start considering it too hard, there is no way anyone is going to keep their eyes on my face.”

“Hah. Hard,” Natasha said, and they lapsed back into peaceful silence.

Across the parking lot, the roof finally collapsed in a shower of golden sparks. The team of reindeer on top fell one after another into the crackling flames, dragging Santa down after them. A final, hand forged Bethlehem star, glowing with heat, hung from a bit of rebar over the remains of the Bronners’ massive billboard, where “--UNDREDS OF 99 CENT ITEMS" and “Peace on Earth” could still be made out through the soot. 

“Shit,” Steve said suddenly, almost falling off the Chevy. “ _Crap._ I promised Bucky I’d bring home a tenement. Where the hell am I gonna get a light-up porcelain tenement now that I’ve _burned down Christmas?”_

“ _L_ _iteral_ dumpster fire,” Natasha said, and mimed an exaggerated chef’s kiss.


	3. Epilogue

“...and that’s how I ruined Christmas,” Steve finished, staring dead-eyed out at the road. His phone was propped in its stand on the dashboard, Bucky’s smug face on video chat. “Happy Thanksgiving. I sure hope you and Sam had a good time last night, because no one else here did.”

“Oh, we did,” Bucky assured him, leering. “Why, you wanna hear about it to cheer up? I can do that, sweetheart, pull your cock out and I’ll—“

“Buck, _no,_ ” Steve yelped, diving forward to cover the phone screen. “We’re driving through _Ohio_ right now _._ Natasha is _right next to me._ ”

Natasha glared over at him, resting the heels of her hands on the steering wheel, drumming her nails on it dangerously. “If your hand ends up anywhere near your dick in this car, I’m cutting them both off.”

“Didn’t you have something with Strange today?” Steve asked desperately, peeking through his fingers to make sure there were no penises on screen, then leaning back when he decided it was probably safe for at least the next few minutes. “How did that go? Tell me about that instead.”

“Oh, yeah!” Bucky brightened, obviously reminded of something. “Yeah, he came over, I forgot to tell you. It turns out our new place is haunted.”

Steve blinked. 

“Haunted?” Natasha asked, interested. She leaned in so her face showed up on Steve’s screen with him. Steve reached around her with a sigh and grabbed the wheel. His arm wasn’t quite long enough to keep her hair out of his face. 

“Yeah, _super_ haunted.” Bucky shrugged. “Strange got rid of it, we’re all cool now. Had to burn the rocking chair in the attic. And the toaster for some reason? But I guess Sam and I were possessed or something. Sometimes. Anyway, the big thing was that when Sam came into my room with a knife a few nights ago, it _wasn’t_ flirting, it was a ghost trying to murder me.”

“It was _poltergeists_ throwing and hiding everything,” Natasha realized, gleeful. She turned to look at Steve, grinning almost ear to ear. “The music Sam couldn’t find. The writing in the bathroom. And you two oblivious, useless idiots thought it was a _prank war._ ”

“Yeah, now I think about it, a big dick drawn on the mirror might make sense, but the words ‘I will paint the walls with your blood while you watch, entrails in your lap’ scrawled on top kind of doesn’t suit Sam’s style. I probably should have noticed before this, but. You know.” Bucky waved his hands around his head vaguely. “Possessed. I hope it didn’t give me any more brain damage.”

“Sam tried to _murder you?_ ” Steve demanded, feeling like the only sane person in the world.

“Nah, I said, Sam and I are cool now,” Bucky assured him kindly, _like Steve was the crazy one here_ . “The ghost _possessing_ him tried to murder me. Don’t worry, he snapped out of it pretty quick when I started making out with him because, come on, Sam trying to stab you is the hottest thing you’ll ever see, Stevie. I just about creamed my jeans when he did that slice-reverse thing. He went outside to clear his head and I guess the next day he called you. And then I called you, you know, while you were fighting Hydra.”

“What the _hell?_ ”

“Hey, we are not the ones who turned Mrs. Claus and her elves over to the FBI and burned down Christmastown last night,” Bucky pointed out. "Don't take that high and mighty tone with me."

“I’ve changed my mind about this entire trip, and this is the best Thanksgiving I have ever had,” Natasha announced, snatching the phone and starting a screencast. “Run through everything one more time from the start, I’m recording.”

Steve concentrated on keeping her hair out of his mouth and the car on the road, instead of ending it all by driving them both into Lake Erie.

***

Eventually Steve pulled over and they swapped seats, which meant Steve got to steer from the driver’s side this time, and a few hours later Steve dropped Natasha off at Barton’s apartment building. He waited to be sure she got inside and there weren’t any tracksuited mafia thugs hanging around the place, so he heard her delighted laughter when she got upstairs and almost smiled before he figured out what she was saying.

“Barton. _Clint._ Wake up, watch this, it will fix your self esteem issues _immediately_ , every single Captain America we know is a bigger disaster than you have ever been in your _life._ ”

Steve sighed and pulled back onto the road.

The new house, when it finally came into view, was nice. Bucky and Sam had gone on a lot about custom-this and original-finish-that, and Steve didn’t really know what any of it had been about. But it was nice. Big enough for three large men to sleep and hang out in comfortably, with room left over for their arsenal, which was all he really wanted out of it. 

Steve parked and jogged up the front steps. He was still trying not to think about things too much, trying not to picture anything, because he didn’t want to get his hopes up. But even the very worst-case scenario was looking pretty good right now. His stomach flipped and he took a moment to swallow, fumbling with his keys.

He took a deep breath and opened the door.

A soup ladle sailed past his head and _ping_ ed off the sidewalk for a good few yards.

“Don’t you even _try_ it!” Sam was shouting at Bucky, who was dancing backwards with half a bell pepper stuffed in his mouth. “I’m making this for _Steve,_ and _me,_ and you can have _protein shakes and dry rations tonight, Barnes._ ”

“You gonna stop me? You gonna stop me, flyboy?” Bucky retorted around the pepper. “What, you gonna watch this soup all night? What happened to having Steve on his knees by six, huh?”

“I can do that too. It’s called multitasking,” Sam promised, pointing the kitchen knife at him. Bucky made a face and mimicked _multitasking_ back at him in a whiny, high pitched voice that had Sam ready to climb over the counter at him.

Steve frowned, backed out the door, closed it. Then he opened it and tried again.

They were still fighting, and now they’d noticed him.

“Steve! This asshole,” Sam shouted, threatening Bucky with the knife again. The look on Bucky’s face was _not_ fear. “This dipshit rifle zombie! Do you know what he did? _Do you know what he did?_ ”

Steve closed his eyes with dread. “I feel like I’m going to find out,” he said.

“He gave me a _fake tattoo_ the morning I went to my _grandmother’s house_ , and then he had the gall to fall on my dick without even being _possessed._ The thing that was in this house? Doesn’t even _work_ on supersoldiers. He’s been in his right mind this _whole week!_ ”

“You fucked me on the couch before you even _knew_ about the haunting!” Bucky shouted back, gesturing through the entryway to said couch, which indeed looked like a supersoldier had gripped one end of it too hard for at least a half an hour. It sagged slightly. “ _Before._ No take backs! Anyway, Stevie and I are a matched pair. He’s gonna sulk all night long if you leave me out.”

“You tried to _stab me in my sleep_.”

“You tried first! I was flirting!”

Sam stared at him for a minute, mouth agape. “I was _possessed,_ and you were _flirting?_ ”

“You made the dick on the mirror. _You made the dick on the mirror._ No one possessed you and made you draw a dick on the mirror!”

Sam finally did go over the counter at him. They both tumbled out of sight, cursing, biting, and grunting. Steve watched them for a few more minutes, but after a long wait he shrugged, zipped up his jacket, and went back to the car for the eighteen pounds of fudge he’d bought with the hopes he could bribe Bucky into not making him drive back for the porcelain tenement building once they re-built the store. 

He caught himself whistling the Glockenspiel song again and didn’t even care, because Sam was just as competitive as Bucky always was. If Steve was lucky, they would keep trying to one up each other in every way they possibly could.

Steve wasn’t going to sit down without wincing for a month. At _least._ He hefted the fudge and the flowers he’d picked up on the way over from Barton’s, and headed back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ME:  
> Steve Rogers: *drops his clothes like a con artist playing Anastasia.* My body is ready.  
> Sam and Bucky: *glaring at each other* I am gonna beat you so hard at sex  
> Steve: 😃😃😃
> 
> QUIETNIGHT:  
> SLKDJFLSJDLFJSDFSDFJKLSDF YOU ARE GONNA KILL ME DEAD  
> Steve: so with the mission and all I haven’t had an orgasm in a week  
> Sudden ceasefire from behind the couch  
> Steve, himself fully possessed by the Spirit of the Season: yeah I bet I can come twice in a row  
> Bucky head pops up from behind the sofa: I made you come three times in that barn in Alsace  
> Sam head appears: Pssshht, a BARN? We’ve got a BED here you barbarian, bet he can go FOUR  
> Bucky’s eyes narrow dangerously, Steve grins like a plastic santa, good thing he got the fudge they’re gonna need calories

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Steve Rogers Ruins Christmas: a Thanksgiving Miracle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27900655) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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